The Sears Tower now has a companion tall enough rival the former worlds tallest building but far less structural looking. The Sears Tower was built using state-of the art techniques for the time that emphasized function our fashion rising in boxy self-supporting piers that end at various elevations. Its new neighbor is beige rather than black with far more ornamentation with a more integral look. This one is a true tower rather than nine square tubes representing the new architecture of Chicago.
This town is the home of many design innovations. My roommate during the last two years of the University of Chicago was a budding architect who knew the rich tradition and history of our adoptive home. (1) The first proto-skyscraper made possible by the twin inventions of the elevator and pump pressured water built with immensely thick brick walls. (2) The first real skyscraper supported by a steel skeleton that proud displayed its metal lattice work offering a move open core space. (3) The rise and fall of ornamentation leading to the first sleek glass-walled slabs with cantilevered floors. (4) Finally the world’s tallest building for most of my life built during my residence in the windy city.
Chicago is the best example of melting pot America. This is exemplified by what I believe is the widest choice in cuisine you can find anywhere in the world. All I need right now is the closest example of Chicago style pizza. My favorite is Gino’s east nestled on a side-street near the John Hancock building on Michigan Avenue; the Magnificent Mile. Unfortunately, I needed to limit my foray to the Loop bounded by the Chicago river on two sides and Lake Michigan on a third. The fourth side is delimited by the L (elevated train) that gave the Loop it’s name. Also inaccessible this day ware Uno’s and Dues’ facing one another catercorner across a street in the near north. Uno’s is the only one with a national franchise and thus is missable in any event.
That leaves Giordano’s makers of the true pizza pie. The classic Giordano’s pizza is deep dish with two differences from all the others. The bottom crust is raised high above the surface which appears to be an ordinary layer of tomato sauce but is in reality a soft coated upper crust. The added ingredients are just under this layer with a thick oozing cheese below. My 10 inch sausage pizza is complemented by two tall Blue Moon wheat beers for the most memorable meal on this trip to date. Yum.
After burning an hour and a half for dinner, I still have almost 4 hours before my next train leaves for Albany. So I wander. Nothing noteworthy till a turn south towards the bottom of the loop. Filling an entire city block and rising up over 100 feet is a brick plated structure with massive arched windows is a mystery building that, to my eyes, is obviously an homage to the world fairs of yesteryear. Crowning the corners and top faces are huge figures of Grecian gods in nautical themes. Though appropriate in Chicago’s architectural cornucopia, the cornices seem to be tacked on to an otherwise boring basic cube. Still, I find myself circling three quarters of the way around the edifice photographing these imposing features as the sunlight fades.
Only as I decide to move on, heading north again, do I find out the nature of this building. It is the Harold Washington Public Library. My buddy, my friend, this is how Chicago choose to remember you! Harold Washington gave me my first (accidental) exclusive that was the stellar scoop of my brief journalistic career. I was a spec photographer for the Hyde Park Herald assigned to do a family photo spread of our local city councilman. As fate would have it, word had just leaked out that Harold would through his hat in the race for mayor. I set down my camera and took out a narrow ruled college notebook to conduct an impromptu interview of the man who would become the first back mayor of Chicago.
State Street was the fashion shopping district during the first half of the last century. (Boy, I love referring to the 1900’s as the “last century”. It makes everything seem new again somehow.) By the time I came to Chicago in the late 70’s, the downtown was dead. The rehabilitation of the grand vaudeville era Chicago Theatre just served to emphasize the dissolution of the rest of the area.
Now the streets are full with people who linger awhile before going home at the end of the workday. This blend of people are new stir of the melting pot with a far higher portion of russians and pacific rim asians to complement the long standing polish and mainland asian population. They enter, leave and pass by a mix of old and new, of renovation and rebuilding in place, that proclaims recent and current investment.
Then I suffer the shock of my brief tour of downtown Chicago as I reach the river. River Plaza is gone. My first home after leaving Hyde Park was a 900 square foot one bedroom apartment on the 37th floor of a 55 story building called River Plaza. Siting between the Wrigley Building and the black walled IBM Center, River Plaza was an unassuming block that was clearly younger than most everything else on the north side of the river. Now in its place is a green curvaceous form that looks like a plant growing before my eyes. It looked like a model set in a contextual photograph. Unreal. Synthetic. Even alien yet also beautiful. This replacement of my one time home is the clearest evidence of the renewal of Chicago.
The sunlight is almost gone and it started to rain. I head back to Union Station through the totally unfamiliar near west side of town.
